- A tender scene from The Black Godfather
Friday marked the start of a great movie-going weekend in Chicago, one that’s filled with such regal offerings as Jean Renoir’s Grand Illusion and Mia Hansen-Love’s Goodbye First Love. Crashing the highbrow party is the 1974 blaxploitation actioner The Black Godfather (Sat 6/30, 7 and 9:15 PM, Univ. of Chicago Doc Films), which, along with films like The Spook Who Sat by the Door (1973) and Trick Baby (1972), does wonders to dispel the notion that the genre was all cheap thrills and big ‘fros. If nothing else, the film could be useful for those seeking an easy viewing experience that doesn’t require them to turn their brains off.
Although it does partake in its share of 70s grindhouse crudeness—complete with the requisite gratuitous nudity and random acts of cartoonish violence—writer/director John Evans pays close attention to some latent themes that similar films tend to gloss right over. Like most blaxploitation fare, The Black Godfather is a crime drama centered on themes of power, corruption, and ambition under the guise of 1970s race relations. Rod Perry stars as an up-and-coming crime lord who beefs with Don Chastain, the head of a Caucasian heroin cartel that peddles its wares in his neighborhood. Perry, a drug dealer himself, claims he wants Chastain out of the picture because his drugs are poisoning the black community. But here’s the kicker: once Chastain is dealt with, Perry will be free to sell his drugs to the community, a plot device many blaxploitation films use in lieu of the aforementioned nudity and violence.
